Object-based attention in Chinese readers of Chinese words: beyond Gestalt principles.
Most object-based attention studies use objects defined bottom-up by Gestalt principles. In the present study, we defined objects top-down, using Chinese words that were seen as objects by skilled readers of Chinese. Using a spatial cuing paradigm, we found that a target character was detected faster if it was in the same word as the cued character than if it was in a different word. Because there were no bottom-up factors that distinguished the words, these results showed that objects defined by subjects' knowledge--in this case, lexical information--can also constrain the deployment of attention.
Li
Xingshan
X
Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37203, USA. xingshan.li@vanderbilt.edu
Logan
Gordon D
GD
D044466:Asian People; D001288:Attention; D005863:Gestalt Theory; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011932:Reading; D014825:Vocabulary